As I travel the country, I am often astonished to see how discouraged educators and parents are by the unproven schemes foisted on their schools by politicians.

The worst of these schemes come from radical politicians who think that government should get out of the business of providing public education.

They want education to be a commodity that you pick up whenever you want, wherever you want.

That is their ideal, though they are far from accomplishing it because it is fundamentally a very idiotic idea.

Governor Bobby Jindal is on that track in Louisiana.

Governor Rick Snyder is pushing hard in Michigan to ensure that education is available “any time, any place, anywhere, anyhow,” or words to that effect.

He doesn’t see to see any purpose or value in public education or public schools.

He recently got a report from a pretentiously named group of faithful right-wing operatives who call themselves the “Oxford Foundation,” even though they have nothing to do with Oxford University and they are not a foundation. They are Republican party wonks, cranking out what the governor wants.

The basic idea behind many of the radical deregulatory schemes is to strap the money to the child’s back (usually called either “fair student funding” or “weighted student funding” or some variation thereof) and then let the student take the money anywhere.

To a local public school; to a religious school; to a for-profit virtual charter; to a trade school; to anyone who hangs out a shingle or advertises on TV. In time, there would be no limits on what sort of institution fits the rubric of “any place, any time.”

Yes, there is pushback. I recently met with a group of superintendents in Michigan whose districts encompass nearly half the children in the state: They are not happy. They are discouraged. In private, one said this whole approach is “educational malpractice.”

And the parents are organizing.

I recently received this excellent post from Michigan Parents for Schools.

The parents understand that what is happening will destroy their schools and their communities.

They know more about their children and about education than Governor Snyder and the “Oxford Foundation.”

The best way to stop this madness is to educate the public. Educate parents.

The “anytime anywhere” model pushed by leader/reformers ignores the consequences (intended?) of dismantling the social construct of education. Money might be saved shutting down the buildings, eliminating the buses, discontinuing the sports teams, clubs, activities, cafeterias…what else…? But how will removing those chances to build the caring, cooperative relationships that are already undervalued in society serve the students relegated to “anytime anywhere”? And you can guarantee that the “education you can afford” crowd will still have their institutions where they gather, well funded, enriched with sports/arts/activities, unburdened by the testing accountability model, stroking those relationships and connections, being groomed for their future dynasty-roles.

Interestingly enough, despite his ‘anytime, anyplace…’ mantra, constant media coverage about it, and legislative changes to support virtual schools in Michigan, the MDE has imposed far stricter penalties than PUBLISHED on districts, who are unable to claim even partial FTEs for students in virtual schools under a seat-time waiver if they don’t follow the rules that were never published to begin with. In the case of any other type of brick-and-mortar school, districts lose PARTIAL foundation allowances when attendance records don’t support a full foundation allowance. Apparently granting partial foundation allowances for seat time waiver pupils in virtual schools is not possible… or perhaps the math is too difficult for the state.

As many districts are now finding out our October Count audits are nearing a close, they are losing entire foundation payments for students that they were counting on, despite following the Michigan Pupil Accounting Rules (http://mi.gov/documents/mde/5-O-B_SeatTimeWaivers_329678_7.pdf). In fact, the document itself hasn’t even been updated since September 2011… and districts rely on this guidance to ensure they apply the rules.

Seems to me that while the governor and state superintendent can’t repeat that phrase enough, there are certainly not incentives for school districts to operate these programs.

My district actually operates a virtual school, and it is doing fantastic things for students who are our most at-risk (high schoolers who have already dropped out, are homeless, and/or have been expelled from their local districts). These students, if they choose to do so, can still play on their resident district sports teams and participate in their clubs. Most don’t… because they feel stronger ties to the virtual school than to their resident district.

However, our virtual model is a mix of virtual and face-to-face, and we find that this blended model affords the kinds of relationships that are necessary to re-engage these youth. Students come to the lab 2-4 times per week for a few hours each time where low staff-student ratios support their academic work. They also engage with mentors and content-area experts online for support during the days they don’t have lab (they are required to log in 365 days a year). So even on Thanksgiving and Christmas, their mentor emails them to check in… and sometimes is the only person in their lives who does so.

You couldn’t be more right about the importance of the connections and the relationships… but I’m happy to report that it is possible for them to occur in blended virtual environments. 🙂

“Competition” is a big word in education, but “commitment” is the word we need. I think a quote by Tapscott and Caston (Paradigm Shift) explains this. “If you want to control, you design organizations for accountability. If you want to accomplish, you design for commitment.” Intertwined with competition is accountability and it doesn’t get the job done in public education.

The question we most need to be considering is not “What kind of education do we want for our children”, but rather “What kind of world do we want for them”. The people that I know want their children to grow up in safe, supportive communities where they feel they belong and where anonymity is virtually non-existent.

The business model for education promotes a me-first mentality with parents shopping for the best deal for their kids – a shopping exercise that is bound to leave families with less money in their pockets for other things and a diminished sense of community in their neighborhoods.

A community model is needed. The person who said “our communities are characterized by the number and strength of the human relationships formed between their members” goes to the heart of it and community schools are our best tool for cultivating those relationships. I’m concerned that the people making big decisions about education are those whose community is their country club and not the people who live next door.

The bottom line of writer of the article to which you provide the link is that education is not just job preparation but training in democratic values.

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He omits to mention the unholy alliance between teachers and teachers unions and the election of representatives to school boards. In most school board elections it is the population of teachers and their families who decide the outcomes. That’s not “real” public accountability; it is capture of the school boards and school systems by the people who work in them for the purpose of keeping control of the tax money in their own hands.

If, then, we discount the “democracy training” argument as mere self-interested, disingenuous indoctrination, we are pushed back to the other purpose of education, namely job readiness training and college readiness training. That is the one legitimate criterion for success of an educational institution, or “business.” Under that standard, the Michigan initiatives are legitimate.

I’m sorry, but that’s nonsense on many levels. What does, or does not, happen in school board elections is a tiny part of what it means to be a citizen. Is it “self-interested, disingenuous indoctrination” to teach students about the US Constitution, our core democratic values, and about the duties of being a citizen in a democratic society?

(The Michigan legislature recently required that all local school board elections be held in November of even-numbered years. This past election was the first under that rule. While that introduces other complications, it does put to rest the notion that only a handful of people participate.)

Second, while public school critics often claim that school boards are dominated by the teachers’ unions, I wonder how often that really happens. My own local school board, Ann Arbor, is filled with current and past parents but no one – not one – on the Board of Education is or was a public school teacher or married to one. They are academics, small business owners, business consultants, university staffers, and so on. The same could be said for past board members going back a number of years. Yet that very same board has taken a vocal role in opposing the proposals now before the Legislature.

Education is not simply job training, and when it becomes so our nation will be at great risk.

And what is (1) the core knowledge about the Constitution, and (2)about our core democratic values, and about (3) the duties of citizenship that you think the public schools actually teach? Or should teach? Please be explicit.

We are mandated by the federal government to teach about the Constitution every September 17. Yes, it’s a bit ridiculous in the very young grades, but we do it. Citizenship in the primary grades boils down to treating themselves, fellow students and teachers, and their school respectfully.

One of the founding principles of public education in this country was to create educated voters. Public school and teaching about democracy, including teaching about voting and how our system of government works, are NOT “self-interested, disingenuous indoctrination.” They are ESSENTIAL to the survival of our republic.

I am frightened at those who believe that the only purpose for education is job training. It makes it sound like all schools should be doing is creating widgets for businesses, and like the whole world should worship at the altar of business. Children are not widgets, and there are things in life as important, if not more important, than business.

I teach. I don’t train. I don’t indoctrinate. There’s an enormous difference. These “virtual schools” and other fly-by-night “schools” do not seem to realize this.

I do it every day. I teach the Constitution, separation of powers, checks and balances, how voting works, how to analyze media messages, the Electoral College, how laws are made.

The entire 8th grade at my school goes to the state legislature every year. We tour the capitol building and meet with legislators. We watch the legislators debate and vote on the bills.. The students learn about various bills under discussion at the legislature and write letters about them to their own legislators or sponsors of those bills. They ask questions about what the legislators think about various bills and issues. These are 8th graders.

By the end of the year at my school, they are very knowledgeable about our system of government and how it works. And I know many other teachers and public schools who are doing similar things. If we are not teaching about our government and helping kids to be involved citizens, we risk an electorate who believes everything that they see in the media and cannot ask informed questions about what’s happening in their government. That’s not a country in which I would like to live.

Sorry to reply here, but otherwise the words are too skinny. It’s a U.S. History class, actually, but my core covers a lot of civics as well. I guess I don’t really teach about the “wealth is created” stuff. That’s more economics than civics. I’m glad you think it sounds like a good course. I like it, and I’ve been teaching it for a long time. You should see how excited the students get about the bills we track. They report dinner table conversations and bring in news articles that they find. We all really learn a lot together.

Unfortunately, with NCLB and RTTT, civics and history courses are under attack because they’re not math or reading. I fear for the future of our democracy if this keeps up. In the meantime, I do what I can in my own little corner of the world…

Since all of government depends on taxing the private sector for the money needed to pay its personnel, the two are as intimately connected as an aircraft carrier and its airplanes. This is why discussion of government must start with discussion of economics. If you teach only what happens in government it is like talking about the airplanes without their base, the aircraft carrier. So, again, How is wealth created in a society? The government does not create the wealth which it consumes. If you work for the government, including the public education system you are riding in a howdah on top of an elephant without thinking about feeding and watering and caring for the elephant. At the moment, the elephant is rebelling because there is too much weight in the howdah, too many people riding the elephant and ignoring the well being of the beast that is carrying them. Before you can levy taxes for public education, you have to have people working and creating wealth to be taxed. This seems self evident to me. A prosperous economy would seem to be the foundation of a well funded public education system. If you were to raise with your students the care and feeding of the elephant in whose basket you and they are riding to see the sights, what would you say to them? Tiger hunting is very exciting, as is tracing bills that appear before the legislature and understanding how and why some get passed and some do not, but unless you are an oblivious colonial overlord, and don’t care how public education is financed, you ought to consider about where the money comes from. YOU are the servant of the people. You DO NOT have autocratic command of the work of the tax payers because you are in education. Where does the wealth come from that pays your salaries, health care, and pensions and what claims on the work of the people are you making by virtue of what values do you make those claims. What did you do for the state that justifies your having a life time claim on it for pension and medical???? What was the contract between you and the state, and by extension, with the workers in the fields? You are riding on top of the elephant of state. Where does the big elephant get its strength and size? Did you “make” it? How is wealth created in a society? What is the nature of the worker? Can you take out your whip and just slash at him to make the great lumbering beast move faster? How does education contribute to the care and feeding of the elephant of the economy?

I think the airplane aircraft carrier is not really the way to look at the relationship between the centrally planned and market economies. The centralized planned parts of the economy (governments and firms) are solutions to particular problems that decentralized markets can not deal with. These are just appropriately different solutions to the same problem of doing the best we can with the resources we face.

Any metaphor has it limits of usefulness, of course, but your “two ways” analysis doesn’t help me much to understand your critique of my point or your own point of the relationship between the public sector and the social base that supports. Education IS a service like any other and the student’s parent is the purchaser. Private schools do it all the time. There is no intrinsic reason for education to be a public monopoly. If you are in fact an economist, what do you teach kids about how wealth is created?

Great post Jennifer! Students are neither “products” or “customers” either; they are students – a classification unto itself. Here’s one of my favorite Callahan quotes: “Education is not a business. The school is not a factory.”

I don’t know why I’m writing because I really don’t have the energy for a debate today, and I have more important things to do… BUT (lol) there is a long, ugly, and largely ignored history of running schools like businesses. Yet doing so is still touted as “innovative.”

Education and the Cult of Efficiency was written decades ago, and it still seems to apply. The Blackboard and the Bottom Line is another interesting read. They are merely two places to start.

By the way, why do people seem to automatically assume that all teachers are members of the union?

That’s actually very sad….we should feel obliged to educate you because you insult and degrade people? You must be very lonely. Go to a bookstore, talk to neighbors, take a course…please find other ways to educate yourself. We don’t need your spewing hatred. Most of us have children to take care of and we won’t have time for you.

It is no longer possible for teachers and their families to significantly influence the outcome of school board elections in Michigan. School Board elections are now held in November of even numbered years. There are far too many people voting at that point for school boards to be unfairly influenced. In my small community there were 5 candidates for 2 open positions. The two incumbents won the seats, although any of the candidates would have been good fits.

” In most school board elections it is the population of teachers and their families who decide the outcomes.”

Wow! So much to laugh at here, I hardly know where to start.

First of all, provide evidence that this is even true.

Secondly, so what if it is true? If the only citizens who show up for board elections are teachers and their families, then I guess all the citizens who care about these elections have spoken.

Thirdly, school board elections are hardly the only component to a democracy.

Fourth, how is this an “unholy alliance” in the first place? Every voter presumably votes their interests in every election. But if it’s teachers, voting their interests is somehow part of a conspiracy?

Fifth, Gov. Snyder was elected. In an election. You know, the democratic process the evil brainwashing teachers have been controlling in their evil government schools. Guess it doesn’t always work out so well for the “unholy” side. For another example, my school district has always had a majority of board members who campaigned on fiscal responsibility and keeping taxes low. Since the bulk of any school district’s costs are salaries and benefits, this hardly seems like the kind of folks the “unholy alliance” would stack the board with. The idea that teaching democratic principles to our students somehow stacks the political deck in favor of the personal interests of teachers is pretty nutty, Falstaff, even considering it’s coming from you.

I work as an advocate for two different organizations in Michigan (the Learning Disabilities Association of Michigan, and the Student Advocacy Center of Michigan). This proposal broadens the gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots”. My conclusion stems from my experiences working with families who have attempted to use the option of “choice” to place their children in schools other than their home schools.

1. Everyone but kids in special education can enroll in schools of choice. So, even when a school of choice says that they are non-discriminatory, they are still allowed to ask a student’s “home” school to agree to pay the cost difference for special education services. If this happens within an Intermediate School District’s (ISD’s) boundaries, it is apparently easier to get the home district’s cooperation, but if ISD boundaries are crossed, it is almost impossible. So–what happens when non-public schools are added to the mix? My prediction is that this kind of plan would gut many urban systems of their “prime” students, and leave very needy students behind. This can be predicted to place an enormous financial burden on schools that are the only safe haven for “hard to teach” children, and can be reasonably expected to further accelerate the undoing of public education for all. It also can be reasonably predicted to further segregate children who are considered “hard to teach” from their more “desirable” peers. Re-segregation–by race, income, or ability–marks a huge loss of ground for the many people who have fought so hard to ensure the civil rights of their children.

2. I have been working with a virtual high school on behalf of a teen in foster care who was excluded from his brick and mortar high school for behavior. While his behavior is not an issue for the virtual school, his needs as a language learning disabled youth have been completely ignored. In fact, in talking to a staff member of this school, the staff member was quite candid, saying that normally they would not even accept a student with learning disabilities (and this is a public school academy!). I am now advocating that the academy assess this young man for Assistive Technology (AT) needs, and demonstrate that the program has some of the basic elements of universal design built into their courses, as well as being delivered on a web-based platform that is user-friendly for students who bring their own AT with them. After some dispute about whether the AT assessment was needed, the court–acting on behalf of the foster child– has ordered the AT needs assessment be done. Seems to me that this is all kinds of problematic for kids with disabilities–if virtual academies are allowed to discriminate by ability and access, this is not quite the bright picture that the Public Education Finance Project is presenting to the public. Of course, if you factor in the lack of dependable access to high speed internet, and computers, you can write off a large number of Michigan’s urban and rural populations, as well.

3. I am trying to figure out how cherry-picking the best and brightest will serve the general population in reviving Michigan’s economy. This came up when advocating for a kid whose behavior resulted in being banned from all schools in his district. He was offered virtual education and limited contact with a tutor while the district did an end run around the special education process by ordering him into a school for the emotionally disturbed. My concern for this student is that he is bright, but by restricting him to the one school he is restricted from access to a rich and challenging curriculum and interaction with his intellectual peers.

4. Over the last two years, I have spoken to countless numbers of parents whose children were either denied Personal Curriculum (PC) plans in their areas of disability, were told they were not on the diploma track, or were told that they had to take all the classes that they had previously flunked in one semester because it was district policy to not offer a PC until they had completed Algebra II, first semester. All of these students were students with identified disabilities, who were entitled to consideration under the PC for students with IEPs to complete “as much as is practicable” of the Michigan Merit Curriculum. How will this new “voucher” system further undermine equity for children with disabilities?

I am sick at heart when I think of the future for these children, as they will, in effect, be barred from participation in this brave new world of meritocracy.

I would be interested to know what the “civil rights” of children are. This is a new concept to me and I would like to know more about it. I have an idea what the civil rights of adult citizens are—religion, free speech, right to bear arms, protection against search and seizure, due process and so forth. Please be explicit.

I cannot answer for kkosobud, of course, but the Supreme Court stated in the Tinker vs. Des Moines case in the 1960’s that “children do not shed their rights at the schoolhouse door.” This means that children have many of the same civil rights as adults do. This would include free speech, freedom of religious expression, rights of due process, etc. I hope that is explicit enough for you. Of course, there are some limits to children’s rights because of age: not being able to vote or drive or so forth. But in general, children have many of the same civil rights as adults. Various courts all over the United States have backed this up.

This is a very helpful reply. I will try to find the case. Do students have a right to “inclusion” in “regular” classrooms? I know that student newspapers do not have the right to publish without prior scrutiny.

Yes, they do have the right to inclusion. See Public Law 94-142 from 1972, in which Special Education and Individualized Education Plans were set up. Children have the right to educated in the “least restrictive environment,” which often means inclusion.

Apple maximizes quality and it sells. Businesses that do not put quality first go out of business, service businesses like education as well. Parents certainly consumers and graduates certainly are products. The move of school elections to November was intended to prevent teachers from choosing their own high spending board bosses. When one has a law compelled stream of income, that’s good boards emphasize economy, but do they really achieve it? Public funding administered by elected officials never looks first at excellence but rather at equity. Equity can never be achieved. Freedom can. Thus the rightness of the Snyder/Oxford plan. Equity is satisfied as much as it can be by equal foundation grants following each child, even in to parochial schools. It’s a much better model of American values than Leftist state monopolies of education. We’ll all become so accustomed to Prussian, Stalinist, Marxist, Maoist models they seem normal and innocuous to most people. Wake up teachers to the dream you are dreaming along with tyrants.

Of course Apple does not sell the highest quality product possible. Very few could afford to buy it.

it may be useful for us to discuss the possible ways that the education market might fail. Two significant issues might be asymmetric information in the market and the principle agent problem. Neither need be fatal to market provision of education, but certainly they must be considered.

Thank you for engaging seriously. You will have to do a little economic education of me here. Please expand on “asymmetric information” and “principal agent.” How are markets assumed to work? What is needed in the way of information? And who is the agent?

Lets do this one at a time. Asymmetric information occurs whenever buyers and sellers in a market have different amounts of information about the good or service being sold. In some markets the solution to this problem may be regulation ( the inspection of food by government, for example), in other situations the problem may be so bad that the government must actually provide the good (unemployment insurance is a good example). If you want to read the fountainhead of the economic literature, look up The Market for Lemons by George Akerlof.

There have been a significant number of comments here arguing that parents are not able to judge the quality of schools effectively. I would argue that this problem could be addressed through government regulation, though likely more active regulation than we currently see in education. There is an argument to be made that the required regulation would be so costly that government production is simply more cost effective for the taxpayer, however.